


Stagnant

by bogged



Category: Harry Potter - Rowling
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2004-08-28
Updated: 2004-08-28
Packaged: 2017-10-04 12:39:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 964
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30166
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bogged/pseuds/bogged
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes, a lot of times, Ron closes himself up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Stagnant

**a. hardback**

Sometimes, a lot of times, Ron closes himself up. He stops fingering his pages and puts his cover back on. And, if need be, he'll reach around for the strap with the lock, find the key, and listen to the pieces click shut.

Harry looks up from his parchment. He's working on lesson plans for Dumbledore's Army by candlelight. Ron knows without having to ask—whenever the DA is brought up the corners of Harry's lips sag just so and his body tenses up, looking smaller, like a child who knows he's in over his head, knows the grown-ups are humouring him, but marches ahead anyway, fueled onward by pride and pleading, watery eyes.

Ron's lips twitch involuntarily. Harry takes it for a tired smile and nods.

"You're right," he says, his voice scratched, "it's too much for one night." He blows out the candle, places the roll of parchment next to the candle now on his nightstand and withers into the shadows of his own bed.

Ron's already lying down, and simply closes his eyes. His lips twitch again. He licks them, his tongue feeling the chapped centers and the cut on the left side of the bottom one, which he gave himself during today's strenuous Quidditch practice.

 

The next morning Ron is up last, and that's nothing unusual. It's Saturday. Neville sits on his bed, quietly chewing on strips of bacon while trying to make sense of his Ancient Runes textbook. It's sunny and it's May, so Seamus and Dean are out for the day, most likely. Harry sits in front of the window with his lips that sag just so and his tiny, knobby body bent over ink-stained parchment.

Ron tries to stand up, tries to stretch, but all of his limbs are too heavy. While he was sleeping, someone's gone and stolen his bones and replaced them with metal rods. He has molten steel for blood. Or, at least, that's what it feels like. ****

b. paperback

Zacharias considers himself to be very bendable. Not that he's easily swayed, because Harry can vouch for that opposite any day. He's not entirely flexible, either. No, what he means is that you can bend him to and you can pull him fro, but ultimately he will take his original shape. Straight. Compact. Easy to stow away, easy to put back on the shelf when you bore of him. Oh right, he can make himself known if he'd like. He can flap his pages in the wind and give paper cuts to every single one of your fingers. He just chooses not to.

It's that time of the week, again. It's Saturday, the day the younger students blow off at Hogsmeade and the day the older ones, now aware of how precious time really is, glare at them for wasting. And it's not as though Zacharias dislikes Saturdays. He likes them fine enough. But he's bored. The food is bland, yellow and black have faded to grey, lessons refuse to challenge, even the people have fizzled out. People he would normally pay attention to now hardly register. Draco Malfoy's merely standoffish. Hermione Granger is redundantly smart. Even Harry Potter, with his outbursts he thinks he keeps so secret, is just another black robe and pointy hat. ****

c. spineless

"Why are you always doing that, eh? Why the fuck are you always… ugh."

Zacharias looked up from the cauldron he was scrubbing, eyes wide. "Pardon?"

Ron smacked his scrungy, black-from-residue rag against his thigh. "Why d'you do that?"

Zacharias looked around, looked at his own greasy rag, and then went back to scrubbing. His back hurt from leaning against the cold wall in Snape's classroom, but the unpolished stone offered more support than the stools they sat on in class and in which Ron was sitting, maybe ten feet away.

Ron went back to his work. The silence was heavy, heavier than it'd been after Snape shut the door behind himself, leaving the Gryffindor and the Hufflepuff to serve their detentions in silence.

"Fuck!"

"What do you want, Ron?" Zacharias asked, fed up.

"You don't end things, do you?"

"I really, _honestly_, have no idea what you're talking about," Zacharias said. He shifted positions and winced as the back of his jumper caught in the wall and ripped slightly.

"You just—just leave things. You look at someone like you're going to talk to them, and then walk away. You start, like maybe you're going to continue, but then you don't. Don't tell me you don't, either, Zacharias Smith. I've seen you do it in the DA all the time. I see you linger around, maybe waiting for everyone else to leave? I don't know. And then you run your fingers through your hair and you leave. You do it all the fucking time and it is _so_ annoying."

Zacharias wanted to say he was impressed, because he was, but the wall was catching his curls and he ran his fingers through them. Ron snorted and went on,

"You're like—like one of those, those what are they called? Those three dot things—"

"Ellipses?"

"Yes." Ron paused to lick his lips and scratch his nose. "Thank you."

 

To put it plainly: time did what time does best. It passed. It held up its end of the deal, and nothing else was said until Snape came back into his classroom to tell the boys they were free to go and that he didn't want to see them, outside of class and meals, again.

Zacharias stood at the doorway with a hand in his curls and a rip in the back of his jumper. "Hey, umm. I—I think there might still be some people at Hogsmeade. D'you wanna go get a drink or something?"


End file.
